Bagels, your preferences?

I always liked the thick chewy NYC type bagels, until I had the ones in Montreal-- thinner, more flavorful, less gluey (and just as Jewish--Montreal has an extensive Jewish tradition).

I am not Jewish myself, but I have to go with the old style-- lox and cream cheese!

But with a toasted bagel, I could be happy with butter, jelly, chicken salad... whatever. Anything + bagel is good.

Can’t take the hypoglycemic hit.

But I use to love lox and bagels. With capers and cream cheese, of course.

And a large selection of flavored cream cheese mixes and assorted toppings. I loved the cream cheese with lox. They had cream cheese with chopped green olives and pimentos, or capers and sardines, crumbled bacon and chopped green onion, and the pickled minced jalapeno peppers... yummy stuff!

Now that I'm in a rural area there's no lox to be had -- ever, so I've had to create my own versions of cream cheese spreads or my bagels from scratch. I combine a bit of canned salmon and some liquid smoke with softened cream cheese and -- voila!-- Behold the poor folks substitute for lox!